by Lucas Flint
Recover suddenly looked up. She had a slightly manic look in her eyes, which made me wonder if she was in a rush. “What? Oh, hi, Winter, Cyclone. Nice to see you two. Sorry if I don’t hug you. You mentioned you had an infectious disease and I don’t want to get it myself if I don’t have to.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I understand. So where should we sit—”
Recover pointed a pen at the bed. “Just sit there and then we can start.”
Recover’s workmanlike attitude took me by surprise. I had thought she was going to immediately start talking to me when she saw me, but it seemed to me she was taking this doctor thing very seriously. Nonetheless, I went over and sat down on the bed, while Cy leaned against the wall with his arms folded in front of his chest, occasionally glancing at Recover’s behind as she stood up and stretched.
“Sorry for the formality, Winter,” said Recover as she craned her neck. “It’s just that there’s a reason things are done like this in real medical offices and it’s because the system works.”
“Hey, I’m not offended,” I said as I swung my legs, which hung a couple of inches off the floor. “But I was wondering how you’ve been doing. You said the real world is crazy.”
Recover bit her lower lip and looked down at her clipboard. “Not just crazy, but outright insane. You probably don’t know this, but everyone is ticked off at Capes Online for the Blackout. Lots of lawsuits, lots of talk of overdue government regulations on VRMMORPGs, lots of people vowing to never play again. Heck, even I wasn’t sure I would log back on.”
“You weren’t?” I said.
Recover nodded. “Yeah. Given your, er, special circumstances, you probably don’t understand just how scary everything was for a while there. Imagine going to sleep and then getting stuck in your own dreams. Forever.”
I nodded. “So what brought you back to the game?”
Recover sighed. “Because I like Capes Online better than my real life. Even after the Blackout, I still like it here better than out there. Plus, I couldn’t just abandon Brawn like that.”
Brawn said nothing, but I could tell he was relieved that Recover was back. It made me wonder what Sidekicks did while players were logged off. It was another question I would have to ask Cy later after I got my diagnosis from Recover.
“I understand,” I said. “But do you mind me asking what kind of work you do outside of the game? Are you a doctor or something? Because you sure seem to know a lot about how medical offices work.”
Recover did not meet my gaze as she said, “My dad was a doctor and I went to work with him a lot when I was younger. I’ve always felt at home in medical offices, so I chose this Base because it felt more like home to me than my own real home does.”
Hmm. Recover must not have had a very good home life, then. I knew she was an adult and lived on her own, but I knew precious little else about her beyond that. “Doesn’t seem like a very secure Base.”
“Oh, it’s a lot more secure than it looks,” Recover assured me with a wicked grin. “Just because you guys entered without running into any traps doesn’t mean anyone can just waltz on in. The only reason you and Cy were able to enter at all is because I added your names to the list of approved guests. Otherwise … well, let’s just say you would be respawning your own Base right about now if you weren’t.”
Recover’s apparent glee at whatever horrible fate befell anyone who got caught in her traps was a little worrisome. It occurred to me that you wanted to have a Healer on your side. Otherwise … well, they did have a pretty good understanding of the human body, after all.
“Anyway, that’s not important,” said Recover. She pulled on some rubber gloves, despite the fact that her Costume already had gloves, and said, “Now, what seems to be the problem?”
I explained to Recover my encounter with Robert and how, before I killed him, he infected me with a mysterious disease, the name and nature of which I did not know. Recover was an incredibly good listener, her green eyes focused firmly on my face the entire time. I could tell she was already running possible diagnoses through her mind, which made me hopeful that she might be able to cure me after all.
“So I am currently three percent Infected, according to this timer, with about three days left before the Infection finishes,” I finished. “What do you think?”
Recover scratched her chin thoughtfully. “I believe you. Your nametag is glowing yellow—always a sign you’re sick—and your skin looks slightly paler than normal.”
I looked up at my nametag and saw that Recover was correct. It did glow a sickly yellow color. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed that before. Guess I had been so busy with everything else that the color of my nametag was irrelevant.
I also looked in the small mirror above the sink and saw that the exposed parts of my face were a little paler. It was barely noticeable, but it was definitely there and I definitely could see it. It didn’t look bad now, but when I thought about how horrible Robert looked when he was fully Infected … I shuddered at the thought.
“Do you feel sick?” asked Recover in a very professional, doctor-like voice. “Any symptoms, like exhaustion, stuffy nose, sore throat, anything like that? Any Stat debuffs or issues affecting your Powers or performance?”
I shook my head. “No, no. I can still use all of my Powers and all of my Stats are normal. The only difference I notice is that I sometimes feel a sharp pain in my back, but that doesn’t last very long.”
Recover stroked her chin. “Interesting. Do you mind if I touch you?”
“What?”
Recover raised her hands. “Put my hands on your shoulders. I have a Power called Diagnosis that allows me to determine another player’s illness by laying my hands on them. It doesn’t heal you, but it does allow me to sense the exact illness plaguing you. It can even suggest possible cures or treatments, though in my experience its suggestions are usually wrong. Still useful for figuring out what is wrong with someone, though.”
“Well, go ahead and do it, then,” I said. “If this will help you figure out what’s wrong with me, I’m all for it.”
Recover nodded and stepped forward. She gently lay her soft, small hands on my rather big shoulders and closed her eyes. It was somewhat awkward being this close to Recover, but I was so curious to find out what was wrong with me that I didn’t focus on that too much. I did, however, feel a presence moving through my body like someone had opened me up and was lighting a flashlight on my organs. It was an uncomfortable sensation, but not painful. I suspected it was Recover’s Diagnosis Power showing her around my body in order to get an idea of what was wrong with me.
Then, without warning, Recover’s eyes snapped open and she took several steps away from me. Fear rose in her eyes as she backed up against the opposite wall, flattening herself against it as much as she could in an apparent attempt to get away from me.
“Recover, what’s the matter?” I said as I tried to rise from the table. “Are you okay? What did you—”
“Stay away from me,” said Recover firmly, though her voice shook slightly with fear. “Stay right where you are. Do not move.”
I paused when I was halfway off the table and then slowly sat back down. I didn’t like the fear in her voice or face, but I wasn’t sure what she was scared of. “What’s the problem, Recover? What did you see?”
Recover took several deep breaths before she finally looked at me again and said, in a fear-gripped voice, “You have the Z-Virus. And there’s no way to cure it.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Before I could ask Recover what the ‘Z-Virus’ was, Recover ripped both of her gloves off of her hands and hurled them into the waste can. She then held out a hand toward Brawn and snapped, “Flamethrower, Brawn!”
Like he did this sort of thing every day, Brawn pulled a massive flamethrower out of his pocket and handed it to Recover, who took the weapon and unleashed its powerful flames upon the waste can. The flames from the flamethrower utterly devoured the waste can
, turning it into a pile of black ash in less than a second before Recover cut off the flames and then clapped her hands.
A laser suddenly decided from the ceiling, pointed at the ashes, and fired a bright purple beam. The purple laser struck the burning ash and instantly disintegrated it. Literally. One second a pile of dark, smoking ash stood on the floor. The next, it was completely gone, as if it had never existed in the first place.
Then Recover whirled around and pointed her hands at me. “Quarantine!”
A large green bubble exploded out of her hands and rushed toward me. The bubble slammed over me and completely covered my body from head to toe before rapidly expanding until it completely enveloped the table I sat on and everything around me for about ten feet in every direction. Cy just barely managed to avoid getting caught in it, hopping out of the way with light feet, but he didn’t run. He just stared at the bubble around me with his mouth hanging open. Not surprising, because I felt much the same way.
Once the bubble finished expanding, a new notification appeared in my vision:
You have been Quarantined! You cannot leave the Quarantine Bubble that [Hero Recover] put you under until you receive permission from the Capes Online Glitch Elimination Force!
While in the Quarantine Bubble, you are unable to use Team chat, send messages to Friends, or interact with other players in any capacity aside from spoken speech. Due to Recover’s Quarantine Power being Level 5, you cannot force your way out of the Bubble. You also cannot die, and if you do, you will respawn inside the Quarantine Bubble rather than your Base.
“What the—?” I said as I read the notification.
“Sorry, Winter, but it’s for your own good,” said Recover apologetically, although I noticed she still kept her distance from me. “I really didn’t want to Quarantine you, but as soon as I saw you had the Z-Virus, it was the only option I had. Otherwise, I would get in trouble with the Glitch Elimination Force. And trust me, you do not want to be on their bad side.”
“What …?” I stood up and walked up to the bubble. I touched it and found that it was as hard as steel. “What is this?”
“Quarantine,” said Recover, gesturing at the bubble. “It’s a Healer-exclusive Power. It allows me to cast a bubble around players or NPCs who have infectious diseases. The bubble prevents you from going anywhere or doing anything, but it also prevents your disease from spreading to other NPCs and players. Because it’s Level Five, that means it can contain players Level Thirty or below.”
I ran a finger along its seemingly rock hard surface. “You mean there’s nothing I can do to free myself?”
“Not until I or the Glitch Elimination Force give you the say so,” said Recover. “Again, I am really sorry about this, but you have to understand I have no choice. It’s for your own good and the good of society in general.”
“Don’t worry, boss!” said Cy. “I will save you!”
Cy ran straight into the bubble so hard that I heard a small clang as his forehead collided with the bubble’s exterior. Cy then staggered backward and fell flat on his back, though he quickly got back on his feet, albeit with a wary, slightly confused expression on his face now. I sighed but wasn’t really surprised that Cy would do something like that.
“Okay, I need you to explain a few things to me,” I said to Recover. “First, what is the Z-Virus?”
Recover looked reluctant to talk to me, but she said, “The Z-Virus was part of a Capes Online World Event that SI Games released about two years ago. In it, a Mad Scientist Villain named Brain Drain invented a virus that could turn players, Heroes and Villains alike, into mindless zombies who would obey his orders. The plot of the event was that Brain Drain was going around infecting Heroes and Villains to make into an army of zombies he would use to rule the world. He even managed to get Lightbringer and Maverick, two of the most powerful NPC Heroes and Villains, on his side.”
My eyes widened. “Whoa. That sounds serious.”
“Yes, and it was even more serious than you would imagine,” said Recover. She glanced at the blackened spot on the floor where her waste can had once stood. “Brain Drain was eventually defeated by an alliance of Heroes and Villains and a cure for the Z-Virus was given out and applied to all affected player characters. Everyone thought it was over, but as it turned out, not everyone got healed.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Brain Drain’s dog, Skippy, got infected with the Z-Virus,” Recover explained. “Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. Animals that got infected with the Z-Virus were all supposed to be killed after Brain Drain was defeated, their bodies burned because the antidote for the Z-Virus didn’t work on animals. But Skippy somehow managed to escape without anyone noticing and went around the City infecting animals and people alike with his particular strain of the Z-Virus that couldn’t be healed with the cure SI Games originally developed for it.”
“You mean the Z-Virus evolved in Skippy?” I said. “How is that even possible? This is a game.”
“A very realistic game, remember,” said Recover, tapping the side of her head. “One of Capes Online’s biggest selling points was how realistic it was, down to the tiniest detail. The game’s Dynamic Environment System meant it would even take in-game illnesses and allow them to evolve and change like real-life viruses. This included the Z-Virus, which was supposed to be a one-time event that would be destroyed and never used again.”
Brawn nodded. “I remember it clearly. Too clearly, to be frank.”
Recover nodded. “Everyone involved wishes they could forget it. Because Skippy’s strain of the Z-Virus was different from the one the antidote was designed to cure, it meant that anyone who got infected—Hero, Villain, Sidekick, or even random Civilians—could not be cured. At all. Not even by high-leveled Healers using the most powerful Healing Powers.”
I gulped. “Let me guess, chaos reigned?”
“Exactly,” said Recover. “Millions and millions of players from both Alignments got infected. Whole cities and towns became war zones overnight as the Z-Virus spread like wildfire among its inhabitants. What started off as a mostly harmless virus diseased to give players another obstacle to overcome quickly overwhelmed up to thirty percent of Capes Online’s playerbase, plus countless NPCs. Prior to the Blackout, it was probably the single biggest controversy in Capes Online despite SI Games’ best efforts to deal with it.”
“Whoa,” I said. “That is insane.”
“It was insane,” said Recover. Her gaze became distant all of a sudden like she was watching a TV that I couldn’t see. “No one was safe, from low-level newbies to high-level pros. If you came into physical contact with a carrier of the Z-Virus or got bitten, then you were dead. Plain and simple.”
“But if the Z-Virus killed you, you would respawn, right?” I said in a worried voice. “And be cured, right?”
“That’s the thing about the Z-Virus,” said Recover. “Turning into a zombie technically doesn’t count as death. Therefore, players who got infected with the Z-Virus did not respawn in their bases. They could log off, which many did, but your in-game character was still active, going around infecting other players and NPCs and getting into all sorts of trouble.”
“What happened when players killed zombie players?” I asked. “Surely they would respawn then, wouldn’t they?”
“That’s the problem,” said Recover, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Killing Z-Virus characters was possible, but you wouldn’t respawn. Instead, your body would remain where it was killed and begin to emit Z-Virus Spores, which would then spread onto other players. It meant that even if you managed to avoid getting bitten or touched by a zombie, you might end up getting infected anyway.”
“Wow,” I said. “That is horrible. How did SI Games fix it?”
Recover smiled weakly. “That’s the thing. They didn’t. The Z-Virus grew too complicated for them to fix with a simple antidote and even the most powerful Healing Powers didn’t do squat. They had to take dra
stic measures.”
“Drastic measures?” I repeated. “Like what?”
“Like restarting whole servers and deleting millions of accounts, forcing tons of players to start over from scratch,” said Recover. “And this included millions of players who had poured billions of in-game hours into crafting their characters. All that work, effort, and energy … gone in an instant. That event is known as the Reset nowadays.”
I gaped. I couldn’t even imagine what that must have felt like. If there was one thing I knew about gamers, it was that many took great pride in meticulously crafting the best character they could. They would spend hours distributing SPs and PPs in just the right way to achieve maximum effect for minimum effort, working hard to get just the right Equipment to make their characters stronger, spend hours coming up with strategies and techniques to give them an edge over the competition, and so on. To lose all of that, even if it was for the greater good … man, I couldn’t even imagine it, and I wasn’t even much of a gamer myself.
“Like I said, it was bad,” said Recover. “Really, really bad. The restart worked because it restored the game back to what it was like pre-Brain Drain, but that didn’t stop millions of players from getting so ticked off that they vowed never to play the game again. Capes Online did recover its playerbase after a while, but quite a few people at the time thought it was the end of Capes Online itself. One guy even tried to shoot up the SI Games offices in real life after his own character got reset.”
I shuddered. I hated mass shooters and had no sympathy for them whatsoever, but I could understand why someone might be upset about losing so much work like that. “What happened after that?”
“SI Games enforced some harsh new rules on the game,” said Recover, “starting with the creation of the Capes Online Glitch Elimination Force, whose job is to take care of any glitches with the potential to destroy the game like the Z-Virus. As well, they put in a new clause in their TOS stating that any player found to knowingly have the Z-Virus or similar viruses was to have their account immediately locked, their character deleted, and they would never be allowed to play the game again. That’s why I Quarantined you. Even though the Z-Virus has no cure, Quarantine does contain it like any other in-game virus or illness.”
